The last places on Earth with no internet

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Britain is addicted to the internet. Just take a look at the occupants of any bus stop or train station platform. Heads down, phones out. When the conversations stop in our pubs and restaurants, the first question asked by many of us isn’t “Whose round is it?”, it’s “What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Ninety-nine per cent of young Britons (aged 16-35) are internet users, according to ONS statistics, and we spend a staggering 10 hours a day consuming media, much of it delivered to our mobiles or tablets. In short, we’re a nation in need of a digital detox.

But one can’t rely on willpower alone. We need to avoid temptation and truly escape the clutches of the internet. So where’s best to go?

We asked Akamai, the content delivery network and cloud services provider, for guidance.

It pinpointed the following 35 countries, each of which has a user penetration rate of less than 20 per cent. Which means that fewer than one in five of its residents can access the internet because of a lack of infrastructure.

Pyramids in Sudan, where less than 20 per cent of the population can access the internetCredit:
Galyna Andrushko - Fotolia

Guatemala

Honduras

Nicaragua

El Salvador

Senegal

Burkina Faso

Mali

Ghana

Cote d’Ivoire

Benin

Algeria

Libya

Sudan

Eritrea

Ethiopia

Cameroon

Uganda

Rwanda

D.R. Congo

Malawi

Zimbabwe

Zambia

Namibia

Madagascar

Mozambique

Angola

Yemen

Pakistan

Turkmenistan

Nepal

India

Bangladesh

Sri Lanka

Myanmar

Indonesia

Many of these places aren’t on the radar of travellers and their low internet usage is in part down to war, civil unrest, and poverty. Libya, Mali, Yemen, and Burkina Faso, for example, are firmly off-limits, with the Foreign Office currently advising against travel.

But others are well worth visiting. Sarah Baxter’s guide to the 50 best holidays for solitude, published by Telegraph Travel earlier this year, included a beach holiday in Nicaragua, a walking holiday through the Himalayan foothills of Ladakh, India, and a three-day trek from Kalaw to Inle Lake in Myanmar.

Other standout countries on the list, from a travel perspective, include Guatemala, Senegal, Malawi, Mozambique, Turkmenistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Of course, there are many internet-free regions that aren’t found in one of these countries. Mongolia, for example. It is one of the world’s most uncrowded countries and regularly billed as a great bet for a digital detox holiday – a trip to meet the Kazakh eagle hunters of the Altai Mountains will take you far from towns, roads and mobile reception. But the country doesn’t appear because the majority of the population lives in Ulaanbaatar, which has great connectivity.

Sarah Baxter also suggests going off-grid in Chilean Patagonia; Russia’s far east, where you’ll meet more bears than people; Alaska’s Wrangell-St Elias National Park, the USA’s largest protected area; and The Yukon in Canada, 80 per cent of which is Wi-Fi-free.

Eighty per cent of the Yukon is Wi-Fi free

Where is internet use prohibited?

A true digital detox can be found in North Korea. That’s because tourists visiting the country aren’t allowed online. Foreign mobiles don’t work, meanwhile, and local SIM cards are expensive and unreliable. Ironically, North Korea actually has very good connectivity. Why? “Because of the tons of imported Chinese mobiles with Chinese SIMs,” explains Martin Levy from the US content delivery firm Cloudflare.

However, due to escalating tensions in the region, the Foreign Office now urges British travellers not to go. But there are plenty of other countries that have major restrictions on who can access the internet – and what sort of content they can view.

Akamai highlights four countries where citizens are prevented from accessing the internet by government policy.

In Cuba, for example, a special permit is required to go online (tourists can buy them from ETSECA offices) and all use is closely monitored. Wi-Fi hotspots (which charge $2 per hour) can be found in big cities but much of the country lives offline.

In Cuba, a special permit is required to go online Credit:
marcin jucha - Fotolia

Belarus

Burma/Myanmar

Cuba

North Korea

Akamai also listed 12 countries where internet access is severely restricted in terms of content or activity.

In China, for example, you can only see websites that have a server located inside the country. So don’t expect to access your usual favourites.

You can't access most foreign websites in ChinaCredit:
getty

China

United Arab Emirates

Saudi Arabia

Cuba

Egypt

Iran

Saudi Arabia

Syria

Tunisia

Turkmenistan

Uzbekistan

Vietnam

The Freedom on the Net report, released today, echoes Akamai’s guidance. Among those countries where the internet is “not free” are China, Iran, Egypt, Myanmar, Belarus, Syria, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but also Ethiopia, Pakistan, Bahrain, Sudan, The Gambia, Thailand, Russia and Kazakhstan.

“The number of places where you can’t access the internet continue to diminish and, aside from pockets where physical geography, such as rock formations, blocks a mobile data signal, it’s increasingly political actions and economic challenges, rather than technology, that keeps a place offline,” said Mark Weeks, MD EMEA, Akamai.

“As smartphone penetration creeps up, even in developing nations, the idea of large-scale internet black spots becomes less likely as providers combine wireless, fixed and mobile technologies to bring the internet wherever there’s demand. Just as it’s no longer possible to blame being on a transatlantic flight or being on the tube for being offline, claiming that you’re beyond the reach of the internet on a beach or in the countryside is fading into the past. People who want a true digital detox holiday, will increasingly have to learn the self-restraint to turn off their own phones.”

Escaping the internet at 35,000 feet

Dozens of airlines now offer Wi-Fi access in the sky, with a handful (including Norwegian, Emirates and Turkish Airlines even offering it for free). Most, however, charge a prohibitively high price, and many don’t provide any access, meaning commercial aircraft are still one of the few places you can go to escape the internet entirely.

“With each passing moment, more and more of the globe is being connected,” says Cloudflare’s Martin Levy. “Basecamp at Everest was connected a while ago, and Brazilian telecom providers are running fibre-optic cables into Amazonia. But last week I was in seat 11E, speeding from the Middle East towards Rome, and I had zero connectivity (and not much legroom either).”

The sky is still (largely) Wi-Fi freeCredit:
GETTY

All at sea

For years, cruises were a fine bet for avoiding emails from the office. But when Norwegian Sky became the first cruise ship with an internet cafe in 1999, it opened the floodgates. Now nearly every cruise ship on the planet offers Wi-Fi, and in 2014 Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas was unveiled with more bandwidth than just about every other cruise ship in the world combined. That’s if you’re willing to foot the bill – passengers can expect to pay around 50p a minute for pay-as-you-go access, or - at best - £10 a day for a package.

However, many cruises visit some truly remote seas (think the South Pacific and Antarctica), and access can disappear for hours, or even days, on end.

“I was without Wi-Fi for a week while cruising around Australia’s Kimberley region,” says Teresa Machan, Telegraph Travel’s Cruise Editor. “That’s the longest I’ve been without internet access in my entire life.”